The Collected Novels of José Saramago

by José Saramago

  The dawn was a foggy one, but despite a mist almost as thick as a soup made solely of boiled potatoes, no one had got lost, everyone had found their way to the church just as the guests to whom the villagers had given shelter had found their way back to the encampment earlier. The whole village was there, from the tiniest babe-in-arms to the oldest man still capable of walking, thanks to the aid of a stick that functioned as his third leg. Fortunately, he didn't have as many legs as a centipede, for centipedes, when they get old, require an enormous number of sticks, a fact that tips the scales in favor of the human species, who need only one, except in the very gravest of cases, when the aforementioned sticks change their name and become crutches. Of these, thanks to the divine providence that watches over us all, there were none in the village. The column was advancing at a steady pace, screwing up its courage in readiness to write a new page of selfless heroism in the annals of the village, the other pages not having much to offer the erudite reader, only that we were born, we worked and we died. Almost all the women had come armed with their rosaries and were murmuring prayers, doubtless in order to strengthen the resolve of the priest, who walked in front, bearing an aspergillum and a container of holy water. Now because of the mist, the men in the convoy had not yet dispersed as would have been natural, but were waiting in small groups to be given their usual breakfast chunk of bread, including the soldiers, who, being earlier risers, had already harnessed the horses. When the villagers began to emerge from the potato soup, the people in charge of the elephant instinctively went forward to meet them, with the cavalrymen in the vanguard, as was their duty. When the two groups were within hailing distance, the priest stopped, raised his hand in a sign of peace, said good morning and asked, Where is the elephant, we want to see it. The sergeant considered both question and request quite reasonable and replied, Behind those trees, although if you want to see him, you'll have to speak first to the commanding officer and the mahout, What's a mahout, The man who rides on top, On top of what, On top of the elephant, what do you think, So mahout means the person who goes on top, Search me, I've no idea what it means, all I know is that he rides on top, it's an indian word apparently. This conversation would have looked set to continue for some time in this vein had not the commanding officer and the mahout approached, attracted by the curious sight, glimpsed through the now slightly thinning mist, of what could have been two armies face to face. Here's the commanding officer now, said the sergeant, glad to be able to leave a conversation that was already beginning to get on his nerves. The commanding officer said, Good morning, then asked, How may I help you, We would like to see the elephant, It really isn't the best moment, said the mahout, he's a bit grumpy when he wakes up. To which the priest responded, As well as seeing the elephant, my flock and I would like to bless him before he sets off on his long journey, which is why I've brought the aspergillum and the holy water, That's a very nice idea, said the commanding officer, none of the other priests we've met along the way so far has offered to bless solomon, Who's solomon, asked the priest, The elephant's name is solomon, replied the mahout, It doesn't seem right to me to give an animal the name of a person, animals aren't people and people aren't animals, Well, I'm not so sure, said the mahout, who was starting to get fed up with all this blather, That's the difference between those who are educated and those who are not, retorted the priest with reprehensible arrogance. And with that, he turned to the commanding officer and asked, Would you allow me, sir, to do my duty as a priest, That's fine by me, father, although I'm not the person in charge of the elephant, that's the mahout's job. Instead of waiting for the priest to address him, subhro said in suspiciously friendly tones, Please, father, solomon is all yours. It is time to warn the reader that two of the characters here are not acting in good faith. First and foremost, there is the priest, who, contrary to what he said, has not brought with him holy water, but water from the well, taken directly from the jug in the kitchen, without ever having been touched by the empyrean, not even symbolically, secondly, there is the mahout, who is hoping something will happen and is praying to the god ganesh that it does. Don't get too close, warned the commanding officer, he's three meters high and weighs about four tons, if not more, He can't be as dangerous as the leviathan, a beast that has been subjugated forever by the holy catholic and apostolic roman church to which I belong, The responsibility is yours, but I've given you due warning, said the commanding officer, who, during his time as a soldier, had listened to many brave boasts and witnessed the sad outcome of almost all of them. The priest dipped the aspergillum in the water, took three steps forward and sprinkled the elephant's head with it, at the same time murmuring words that sounded like latin, although no one understood them, not even the tiny educated minority present, namely, the commanding officer, who had spent some years in a seminary, the result of a mystical crisis that eventually cured itself. The priest continued his murmurings and gradually worked his way round to the other end of the animal, a movement that coincided with a rapid increase in the mahouts prayers to the god ganesh and the sudden realization on the part of the commanding officer that the priest's words and gestures belonged to the manual of exorcism, as if the poor elephant could possibly be possessed by a demon. The man's mad, the commanding officer thought, and in the very instant in which he thought this, he saw the priest thrown to the ground, with the holy water container to one side, the aspergillum to the other, and the water spilled. The flock rushed to help their pastor, but the soldiers stepped in to avoid people getting crushed in the confusion, and quite right too, because the priest, helped by the village titans, was already trying to get up and had clearly sustained an injury to his left hip, although everything indicated that no bones were broken, which, bearing in mind his advanced age and his stout, flabby body, could almost be considered one of the most remarkable miracles ever performed by the local patron saint. What really happened, and we will never know why, yet another inexplicable mystery to add to all the others, was that solomon, when he was less than a span or so from the target of the tremendous kick he was about to unleash, held back and softened the blow, so that the effects were only those that might result from a hard shove, but not a deliberate one and certainly not one intended to kill. Lacking that important piece of information, the dazed priest merely kept repeating, It was a punishment from heaven, a punishment from heaven. From that day on, whenever anyone mentions elephants in his presence, and this must have happened many times given what occurred here, on this misty morning, with so many witnesses present, he will always say that these apparently brutish animals are, in fact, so intelligent that, as well as having a smattering of latin, they are also capable of distinguishing ordinary water from holy water. The priest let himself be led, limping, to the rosewood chair, a magnificent piece of joinery almost worthy of an abbot's throne, that four of his most devoted followers had run to the church to fetch. We will not be here when they finally return to the village. The discussion will be a stormy one, as is only to be expected among people not much given to exercising their reason, men and women who come to blows over the slightest thing, even when, as in this case, they are trying to decide on the pious task of how best to carry their pastor back to his house and put him to bed. The priest will not be of much help in settling the dispute because he will fall into a torpor that will be a cause of great concern to everyone, except the local witch, Don't worry, she said, there are no signs of imminent death, not today or tomorrow, and nothing that can't be put right by a few vigorous massages of the affected parts and some herbal tea to purify the blood and avoid corruption, meanwhile, stop this bickering, it will only end in tears, all you need do is to take turns carrying him and change places every fifty paces, that way friendship will prevail. And the witch was quite right.

  The convoy of men, horses, oxen and elephant has been swallowed up by the mist, so that you cannot even make out the vast general shape of them. We'll have to run to catch up to them. Fortunately, considering the brief time we spent l
isten ing to the village titans' arguments, the convoy won't have gone very far. In normal visibility or when the mist bore less of a resemblance to potato purée, we would only have to follow the tracks left in the soft soil by the thick wheels of the ox-cart and the quartermaster's wagon, but, now, even with your nose pressed to the ground, you still wouldn't be able to tell if anyone had passed. And not just people, but animals too, some of considerable size, like the oxen and the horses, and, in particular, the pachyderm known in the portuguese court as solomon, whose feet would leave in the earth enormous almost circular footprints, like those of the round-footed dinosaurs, if they ever existed. And speaking of animals, it seems impossible that no one in lisbon thought to bring a few dogs with them. A dog is a life insurance policy, a tracker of noises, a four-legged compass. You would just have to say to it, Fetch, and in less than five minutes, it would be back, tail wagging and eyes shining with happiness. There is no wind, although the mist seems to form slow whirlpools as if boreas himself were blowing it down from the far north, from the lands of eternal ice. However, to be honest, given the delicacy of the situation, this is hardly the moment for someone to be honing his prose in order to make some, frankly, not very original poetic point. By now, the people traveling with the caravan will have realized that someone is missing, indeed two of them will probably have volunteered to go and save the poor castaway, an action that would be most welcome if it weren't for the reputation as a coward that will follow the castaway for the rest of his days, Honestly, the public voice will say, imagine him just sitting there, waiting for someone to rescue him, some people have no shame at all. It's true that he had been sitting down, but now he's standing up and has courageously taken the first step, right foot first, to drive away the evil spells cast by fate and its powerful allies, chance and coincidence, however, his left foot has grown suddenly hesitant, and who can blame it, because the ground is invisible, as if a new tide of mist had just begun to roll in. With his third step, he can no longer see his own hands held out in front of him as if to keep his nose from bumping against some unexpected door. It was then that another idea occurred to him, what if the road curved this way and that, and the direction he had taken, in what he hoped would be a straight line, led him into desert places that would mean perdition for both soul and body, in the case of the latter with immediate effect. And, o unhappy fate, without even a dog to lick away his tears when the great moment arrived. He again considered turning back to ask for shelter in the village until the bank of mist lifted of its own accord, but now, completely disoriented, with as little idea of where the cardinal points might be as if he were in some entirely unfamiliar place, he decided that his best bet was to sit down on the ground again and wait for destiny, chance, fate, any or all of them together, to guide those selfless volunteers to the tiny patch of ground on which he was sitting, as on an island in the ocean sea, with no means of communication. Or, more appropriately, like a needle in a haystack. Within three minutes, he was fast asleep. What a strange creature man is, so prone to terrible insomnias over mere nothings and yet capable of sleeping like a log on the eve of a battle. And so it was. He fell into a deep sleep, and it's quite likely that he would still be sleeping now if, somewhere in the mist, solomon had not unleashed a thunderous trumpeting whose echoes must have been heard on the distant shores of the gan ges. Still groggy after his abrupt awakening, he could not make out precisely where it was coming from, that foghorn come to save him from an icy death or, worse, from being eaten by wolves, because this is a land of wolves, and a man, alone and unarmed, is helpless against a whole pack of them or, indeed, against one. Solomon's second blast was even louder than the first and began with a kind of quiet gurgling in the depths of his throat, like a roll on the drums, immediately followed by the syncopated clamor that typifies the creature's call. The man is now racing through the mist like a horseman charging, lance at the ready, thinking all the while, Again, solomon, again. And solomon granted his wish and let out another trumpet blast, quieter this time, as if merely confirming that he was there, because the castaway is no longer adrift, he's on his way, there's the wagon belonging to the cavalry quartermaster, not that he can make out details because things and people are nothing but blurs, it's as if the mist, and this is a much more troubling idea, were of a kind that can corrode the skin, the skin of people, horses, even elephants, yes, even that vast, tiger-proof elephant, not all mists are the same, of course, one day, someone will cry Gas, and woe betide anyone not wearing a tight-fitting mask. The ex-castaway asks a soldier who happens to be passing, leading his horse by the reins, if the volunteers have returned from their rescue mission, and the soldier responds with a distrustful glance, as if he were speaking to some kind of provocateur, because, as a quick flick through the inquisition's files will confirm, there were plenty of them around in the sixteenth century, and says coolly, Wherever did you get an idea like that, there was no call for volunteers here, the only sensible course of action in a situation like this is to do exactly as we did and sit tight until the mist lifts, besides, asking for volunteers isn't really the captain's style, usually, he just points, you, you and you, quick march, and anyway, the captain says that when it comes to heroics, either all of us are going to be heroes or none. To make clearer still that he considered the conversation to be at an end, the soldier rapidly hoisted himself up onto his horse, said goodbye and galloped off into the mist. He was displeased with himself. He had given explanations that no one had asked him for, and made statements he was not authorized to make. However, he was consoled by the fact that the man, although he didn't really have the physique, probably belonged, what other possibility was there, to the group of men hired to help push or pull the ox-carts whenever the going got rough, men of few words and even less imagination. Generally speaking, that is, because the man lost in the mist certainly didn't appear to lack imagination, just look at the way he had plucked out of nothing, out of nowhere, the volunteers who should have come to his rescue. Fortunately for the man's public credibility, the elephant is a different matter altogether. Large, enormous, big-bellied, with a voice guaranteed to terrify the timid and a trunk like that of no other animal in creation, the elephant could never be the product of anyone's imagination, however bold and fertile. The elephant either existed or it didn't. It is, therefore, time to visit him and thank him for the energetic way in which he used his god-given trumpet to such good purpose, for if this had been the valley of jehoshaphat, the dead would undoubtedly have risen again, but being what it is, an ordinary scrap of portuguese earth swathed in mist where someone very nearly died of cold and indifference, and so as not entirely to waste the rather la bored comparison with which we chose to encumber ourselves, we might say that some resurrections are so deftly handled that they can happen even before the poor victim has passed away. It was as if the elephant had thought, That poor devil is going to die, and I'm going to save him. And here's the same poor devil heaping thanks on him and swearing eternal gratitude, until finally the mahout asks, What did the elephant do to deserve such thanks, If it wasn't for him, I would have died of cold or been devoured by wolves, And what exactly did he do, because he hasn't left this spot since he woke up, He didn't need to move, he just had to blow his trumpet, because I was lost in the mist and it was his voice that saved me, If anyone is qualified to speak of the works and deeds of solomon, I'm that man, which is why I'm his mahout, so don't come to me with some story about hearing him trumpet, He didn't just trumpet once, but three times, and these same ears that will one day be dust heard him trumpet. The mahout thought, The fellow's stark staring mad, the mist must have seeped into his brain, that's probably it, yes, I've heard of such cases, then, out loud he added, Let's not argue about whether it was one, two or three blasts, you ask those men over there if they heard anything. The men, whose blurred outlines seemed to vibrate and tremble with every step, immediately gave rise to the question, Where are you off to in weather like this. We know, however, that this wasn't the que
stion asked by the man who insisted he'd heard the elephant speak and we know the answer they were giving him. What we don't know is whether any of these things are related, which ones, or how. The fact is that the sun, like a vast broom of light, suddenly broke through the mist and swept it away. The landscape revealed itself as it had always been, stones, trees, ravines, and mountains. The three men are no longer there. The mahout opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again. The man who insisted he'd heard the elephant speak began to lose consistency and substance, to shrink, then grow round and transparent as a soap bubble, if the poor-quality soaps of the time were capable of forming the crystalline marvels that someone had the genius to invent, then he suddenly disappeared from view. He went plof and vanished. Onomatopoeia can be so very handy. Imagine if we'd had to provide a detailed description of someone disappearing. It would have taken us at least ten pages. Plof.